The next challenge coming up on Thursday is “Desert Animals”, and it is co-sponsored by Bucketfeet, who prints on shoes! What!

I thought I’d try something a bit different with this one.

An absence of colour, keeping the design neutral, with a sprinkle of coppery glitter for good measure. I used some scans of watercolour brushy blobby things I painted a while ago, and did dream catchers with desert animal “charms”, plus some geo crystals and feathers to top them off. Whew!

The design contest are definitely a challenge with one a week, mixing in client work, sewing, painting, and maybe sleeping too, but they’re fun and worth the time to stretch my creative muscles and try something new.

In the middle of all this stuff going on, we’re working on our new work website. I’d been wrestling with changing our name or not, rebranding, upp-ing our game and going back to our roots a bit. We decided to stick with Green Couch Designs, and our new logo, designed by me, complete with custom handlettering and illustration…

Norm’s working away on building the bones of our new site and it’s looking great! So my job now is to create the creative bits to go on it, sort out portfolio images, write some interesting content, and yeahhh! It’s coming along.

Designing for yourself is hard! There are a lot of factors, a LOT, to think about and include, or not include. I always look at all these pretty websites with some pretty, soft minty colours and brushy scripts and lovely Pinterest-ready photos and try to incorporate that kind of feel but it never works, at all. It doesn’t feel right or like “us”. We’re all about passion, hands-on, creative, colour, thinking outside the box, diving in and having fun! So, I went with what felt right and made me say “Yessss! That’s it!”

I also just finished this book, Fascinate, by Sally Hogshead,so good and spot on, and helpful! It totally helped me figure this stuff out and just go with what feels right. So watch for a new site coming up very soon! And with that, I better get busy, my fab web guy is waiting on me…. ahem… ;D